The Garden of Foolish Delights
As part of my own Journey Of The Fool I have chosen to join The King as a Fool. His Fool if he wants one, my own if he doesn't. It's always been the role of Fool to ridicule their kings, whilst having their best interests at heart, and for children to point out that the emperor has no clothes. And perhaps that's half the fun. This role originally was to involve tarot and dream readings and predictions for those who want them, King or Citizen. It also involves random esoterical quotes, and bringing a smile to people's faces. And whilst I've indulged in a little of this, I've ended up spending more time, well, creating this Wiki for one, and just getting real life issues sorted out. I've got a family, after all, and these family thiungs don't take care of themselves! Lunchtime, Thursday 4th August An hour ago I drew a card to see the opinion the cards had of my choice. The card that jumped into my hand was The Hierophant, a card that represents a teacher, and gaining wisdom from dreams. It says more but time is pressing, and I'll flesh this out later. But, in short, the card read my mind about my intentions, if not exactly how it might be recieved! Those who relate to this card are often considering expressing their spiritual attributes to the outside world. With this card there is often the desire to, in some way, influence and guide others in their journey through life, incorporating a spiritual perspective... - Megan Skinner I'm not sure whether that sounds arrogant, or pompous, or just stupid! The Name of The Country One of the big topic on the Citizens Required forums is What Should Our Country Be Called? (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/dannywallace/F2239601). I decided to have a look at the tarot cards for an indication of what we might be calling our Country in the future... The first card I selected was The Moon. This was a little confusing. Obviously we wouldn't be calling King Danny's country 'The Moon'. For one thing, it's misleading, some might say false advertising. For another, the moon as a territory is already a theme we're familiar with, through Dennis M. Hope. Furthermore, the imagery of the card is a little nightmarish. A dark night illuminated by a full moon with a 'sleeping' face. Two wild dogs or wolves bark up at it, on either side of a deep dark gulf of water, two towers behind them. It's typically a card of facing fears and illusions, before the light of day. Not a cheerful card. And so... I shuffle the cards and select a second card... And drew The High Priestess. This card is, strangely enough, 'ruled' by the Moon. The High Priestess is a card of intuition and of secret wisdom. In this pack the High Priestess is an old woman, her eyes bound and her lips pursed as if she holding back her secrets. What does this say about King Danny's Country? Is a wise woman going to provide the answer? Still confused, I shuffle the pack once more, and draw a third card... The third card is The Eight of Cups. The image shows eight cups, packed neatly in two rows of four. We look at these cups through a haze of rippling water, which obscures the details of most of the cups, but one is almost sharply in focus, and has a halo of light around it. Nothing immediately grabs my attention as to naming countries, and so I shuffled the pack once more, and drew again... And drew The High Priestess again. I guessed there was little point in drawing more cards. If I got to one card a second time, surely the answers were here. I just needed to dig a little deeper. So... The Moon... Looking at the miserable picture, two things occur to me. One - maybe Dennis M. Hope is actually the solution to the problem. Maybe he will be the one to select a name for the new country. Or maybe the new country will actually be named after him, and we'll all end up 'living in Hope'? But there's a second alternative. Maybe the dark scene depicts the initial burst of enthusiastic shouting by various Citizens to get their suggestion heard. Meanwhile the King is passive and silent, like The Moon overhead. The second card is also connected to the Moon, and also presents a passive and quiet demeanor. And yet we know now that there are secrets hidden here, answers sealed behind these lips. The High Priestess doesn't look at at us, she looks inwards. And when she is ready to talk, she will. The third card symbolises a selection of eight almost identical cups, and yet one is certainly more prominant than the other. One has been circled, as if chosen, whilst others are barely visible through the rippling water. The fourth card brings us back to The High Priestess, who seems to be telling us there is nothing more to learn from the cards. All in all, the first two cards are connected to the Moon, which is connected to the tides. The third card is also a water card. Water is linked directly with emotions, so it seems the cards are saying the issue is a very emotional one. The series of cards reads as a process... initially we see the chaos of everyone shouting opinions, with no obvious effect... secondly we see the internalisation of ideas and 'secrets'... lastly we see eight near identical options presented, with one option eventually being chosen over the others. This seems to be to indicating that the naming process will come down to a poll, and the final name will be selected by the Citizens. I could pick my way through all 78 cards in the pack to try to find an actual name, but I'd only get 78 different answers, many of which would contradict each other. The only name they would be able to give me collectively would be the name of the tarot pack, of course: Vertigo. Which isn't bad for a country that's situated several floors up. And, well, U2 wrote a song about being in a place called Vertigo, so if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us. Perhaps. So, there you go. Here endeth the reading... Astrology To go with the whole mysterious nature of The Fool, and seeing as I created the idea of Karmic Years (like Chinese Years) for Join Me, I thought that The Country might have an astrology idependent of either the western world or the exotic east. So I drew twelve cards. I'd already pretty much decided that the King should really be the first 'star sign', filling out the whole of August and being two parts Leo, one part Virgo. So when the first card I got was The King of Wands - one of two cards I'd previously decided was the best representative of King Danny, being a confident and creative 'doer' - and then the second card turned out to be The King of Cups - the other relevant card, showing a calm dreamer of a man - I was a little spooked... I didn't end up going along with the Astrology idea further than this, despite getting cards like The Nine of Wands, depicting a wand being waved from inside a box made of wands (representing The Country perhaps), The Hanged Man, a character who's turned his world on his head, either in contrast to The Emperor (another card), or actually taking the idea of the Emperor inverting his own world to seek enlightenment, and Temperance, an angelic figure pouring liquid from one cup to another. The last two I've had a few times in 'Citizen' readings. The reasons why I didn't continue with the idea of Astrology, at least using my selection of cards, was the fact that the first two cards showed different aspects of the same person. Secondly a tarot pack has numerous cards of the same suit - having drawn the Five, Eight and Nine of Wands I was a bit lost at how to turn them into distinct star signs. Lastly, one of the cards drawn was The Fool. And I don't really belong amongst the constellations. Might push this idea further, but it needs imput from other Citizens for suggestions for star signs, not the limited scope of a pack of cards! Dreams - the morning of 22nd August I had a dream that was more Join Me based than Citizens Required based, but it had our King in, so it deserves a mention. It was a lazy summer morning, and a number of Joinees were in a pub, tidying up, as if preparing for a Meet or returning home from one (in fact, in retropsect, very much like the aftermath of the first Good Good Friday Meet). Amongst some familiar faces, including a couple, Lou and Luke, who had changed their hairstyles so radically I didn't recognise them at first, Danny was there, and was chatting with me as I stood at the door, thanking me (and everyone else) for helping out. But here's the thing - Danny's a big bloke. Tall. Slightly imposing. And he may be really nice, but it's still slightly imposing and awe-inspiring. In the dream he was smaller, looking like a fresh faced youth of about nineteen or twenty, but with the same amount of cheerfulness. I thought perhaps it was the fact he'd was clean-shaven, or that he was wearing smaller shoes that didn't make him so tall, but ultimately it was just a younger Danny. And the over-all feeling that I had, and retained once I'd woken up, was that Danny was just a cheery enthusiastic 'kid' in a way, genuinely thankful for the help he recieved, not the slightest bit imposing. Not awe-inspiring, just being really friendly and approachable. Not being the sort of guy you feel you have to go out of your way to impress, instead just being just the same as any one of us, really, a nice friendly guy, doing some sort of project, happy to have people along for the ride... It certainly put a positive spin on the way I see things!